The Statistics Act 1975 requires that everyone in New Zealand on census day must fill out a census form. If you don’t participate, or if you provide false or incomplete information, you could be fined.

Because participation in the census is required under the Statistics Act, this overrides the general requirements of the Privacy Act.

A 1975 statute may well benefit from revision. There does seem to be a slight obsession with statistics in NZ (eg Departure cards etc).

IIRC a number of countries are starting to consider if 10 year census data is really necessary in this day and age when so many other data points are collected so often anyway.

Its 5 years.

Its valuable information, to not only know the population and demographic changes, but to locate trends that help infrastructure planning.

Yes there are many datapoints. They know all about me and my other two family members. Banks, rates, etc, but not everyone is that obvious.They should compare all know datapoints, locate those that lied or did not fill in the form, and fine them. I recall it was $500. Get IRD to instantly take it out next pay or benefit day. Then give that to charity.

Births and deaths are registered. Immigrants are registered. Seems to me they ought to know what the population is on any given day...

The Statistics Act 1975 requires that everyone in New Zealand on census day must fill out a census form. If you don’t participate, or if you provide false or incomplete information, you could be fined.

Because participation in the census is required under the Statistics Act, this overrides the general requirements of the Privacy Act.

A 1975 statute may well benefit from revision. There does seem to be a slight obsession with statistics in NZ (eg Departure cards etc).

IIRC a number of countries are starting to consider if 10 year census data is really necessary in this day and age when so many other data points are collected so often anyway.

Its 5 years.

Its valuable information, to not only know the population and demographic changes, but to locate trends that help infrastructure planning.

Yes there are many datapoints. They know all about me and my other two family members. Banks, rates, etc, but not everyone is that obvious.They should compare all know datapoints, locate those that lied or did not fill in the form, and fine them. I recall it was $500. Get IRD to instantly take it out next pay or benefit day. Then give that to charity.

Births and deaths are registered. Immigrants are registered. Seems to me they ought to know what the population is on any given day...

But we don't require registration of movement across the country. We should have an idea on the total population, but not necessarily the location and spread. Census provides that.

Potentially more accurate results too. Paper forms need to be read by someone/something adding the potential to misread things. Now you might argue "but someone could answer incorrectly online". Correct. Just like they could answer incorrectly on paper - those two more or less cancel each other out.

Potentially more accurate results too. Paper forms need to be read by someone/something adding the potential to misread things. Now you might argue "but someone could answer incorrectly online". Correct. Just like they could answer incorrectly on paper - those two more or less cancel each other out.

eracode: @Geektastic. There’s more to a census than just determining the population of the country. But you know that, kidder.

Not having a census is like running a business and not doing any financial accounts. You have to do financial accounts for tax purposes but they have a massive level of value. The numbers and past numbers tell a lot of valuable stories. Same with a census

Ran through it in our house. Excellent use of form completion across all the questions like religion, and dynamically changing forms so when I went to fill it out for my kids and said they were students all sorts of questions disappeared. I was quite impressed at how well it was designed.

Very disappointing to see that Google Analytics JavaScript is included in the online census pages. There doesn't seem to be any mention of it on the "Looking after your information" or "Privacy and Confidentiality" pages, but arbitrary third-party code is running on every page and actively collecting information to send back to the overseas servers of the world's biggest advertising company.

Realistically the threat of anything dodgy going on is low, but I would expect much better from something you're legally obligated to enter some of your most personal information into.

Be interesting to see how things go over here. If the Australian online census was brought down by sustained attacks on the website, can we expect to be targeted also? Are we better prepared? Certainly hope so as this is important data to gather - and to keep safe.